Some of the most interesting and imaginative fiction written by any Welsh author in the last thirty years has come from the pen of Christopher Evans. Highlights include The Insider, a dark alien takeover story; and Aztec Century, an award-winning alternative history depicting an Aztec invasion of Europe. Evans has also co-edited Other Edens - an influential series of British sci-fi anthologies, and penned a guide to writing science-fiction. Here he discusses some of the ideas behind his work. This email interview was completed in August 2004.

By ANTHONY BROCKWAY

Christopher Evans: I read a lot of American superhero comics when I was a kid as well as British ones like Victor and Lion. I was always drawn to colourful and futuristic stories--don't really know why. Possibly it was due to being a child growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was a real sense that the future would be a fascinating place. British comics often had cut-away drawings of lunar settlements, nuclear-powered starships, that sort of thing, and I was half-convinced that if I ever went to America I'd actually find the Justice League and Spiderman battling villains in downtown New York. Anything seemed possible. The whole 1960s ethos was in a sense a reaction to the straitjacket of post-war austerity. The future was a far sexier prospect than it is now. I was much too busy dreaming of having superpowers and visiting alien worlds to pay attention to the any social changes going on around me. Typical nerd, I suppose.

The first novel you wrote under your real name was Capella's Golden Eyes back in 1980. Can you recall what your fictional aims were at the outset of your writing career?

Christopher Evans: I just wanted to write a good modern science-fiction story in an exotic location that paid suitable attention to being well written and having believable characters whose fate you would care about. I also wanted it to be less Anglo-American centred than most of the science fiction I was reading, which is why the Chinese turn up at the end.

I have a copy of your alien take-over novel The Insider (1981) in which you have inscribed the message: "This one's a bit bleak, so read it in small doses!" Someone else referred to it as: "More Camus than Clarke". As an inside view of dissociation it's superb - what inspired you to write such a dark psychological novel?

Christopher Evans: The Insider was written when I was going through my own period of alienation, so it's very much a fictional objectification of my inner state of mind at the time, though taken to an extreme, of course!

There's plenty of politics in that book too particularly concerns over the rise of British nationalism and the far-right. Was The Insider meant as an indictment of unfeeling Thatcherite values and the jingoism that accompanied the Falklands war?

Christopher Evans: The more I write the more I've become convinced that politics is at the heart of all my fiction in some shape or form. Given that a large part of 20th century history was shaped by huge clashes in ideologies, it's not surprising to me that I would try to reflect something of this in my writing. As for nationalism--well, it fascinates me in a horrible sort of way. I consider myself patriotic in the sense that I love the land where I was born. But I heartily dislike nationalism. Objectively it's fatuous to believe that one nation is somehow superior or preferable to all others. Nationalism is an appeal to our basic tribal instincts--harmless when you're willing Wales to beat England at rugby but far from harmless when you start calling people Argies or sheep-shaggers because you then stop thinking about them as people just like yourself. Margaret Thatcher was very good at tapping into people's latent xenophobia when it suited her. There are so many things I consider to be repulsive about her period in power, and, yes, The Insider was meant to be an indictment of some of them.

Christopher Evans: Interesting question--I hadn't considered this until you pointed it out! It's culture-clash, probably, highlighting the ways in which people often try but fail to understand one another due to differences in their upbringings. In science fiction you can often make these differences really stark.

Male/female relationships, I've noticed, are always convincingly drawn in your work (rare for sci-fi). Is this something you have especially focussed on?

Christopher Evans: Absolutely. My aim has always been to make the characters in my stories as three-dimensional as possible whatever I'm writing. In my view science fiction demands this no less than any other kind of fiction--though I suspect this is still something of a minority view within the field itself. It was always a big source of frustration to me to read sf which might be hugely inventive of concepts but had no convincing human dimension. I'm much more interested in how rounded characters might react to whatever weirdness I throw their way in my fiction. As for male/female relationships in particular--well, half the human race is female, so you're restricting yourself enormously if you don't write about them. I'm interested in the interplay between our private and public lives.

Can you tell us how the Other Edens project arose and why did it come to an end after the third anthology in 1989?

Christopher Evans: The first Other Edens anthology was conceived as a showcase for the work of some of the best-known British sf writers. It was published to coincide with the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention, which was being held in Brighton. At the time there were very few outlets for short sf stories in the UK. Traditionally a lot of sf writers begin their careers by publishing short stories before they move on to novels, and Rob Holdstock and I hoped to encourage new voices as well. We were helped in this by the enthusiasm of Jane Johnson, who was the editor at Unwin Hyman. And we did manage to generate plenty of interest for a while. Unfortunately original anthologies seldom sell well, no matter how distinguished the cast-list. After the third anthology it just wasn't economically sustainable, as well as too time-consuming for Rob and myself: we had our own fiction to write. But both of us consider it to have been very worthwhile, as well as fun to do.

In Chimeras (1992) - a book of linked stories - you examine art and notions of artistic inspiration. You've also written a fair bit on sci-fi and fantasy art. Why the special interest in this subject?

Christopher Evans: I've no special expertise about fantasy art, and, to be quite honest, no special interest in it. The texts I wrote for the art books were paid jobs of journalistic work done when I was a full-time free-lance writer who needed to earn a crust. That's not to denigrate them, simply to say I did them because I was commissioned. Chimeras didn't spring directly out of this work at all. For me the book is more about creativity in general than visual art in particular. I wanted to explore the tensions between everyday life and the private obsessions of the artist. If anything, what inspired it was the Cyril Connolly quote: "The enemy of art is the pram in the hall."

Your award-winning alternative history novel Aztec Century (1993) is probably your best known work. Why did you choose that particular culture and the historical events concerning Cortez to play around with?

Christopher Evans: The germ of Aztec Century came from a Barbara Tuchman book, The March of Folly, an almost throwaway line about Cacama, the nephew of the Aztec emperor who was immediately hostile to the arriving Spaniards, and what might have happened had the Aztecs attacked them there and then rather than waiting until much later, when it was too late. I knew nothing about the Aztecs, but the more I read, the more fascinating their story became to me and the more the novel began coalescing in my mind.

You have a lot of fun in Aztec Century with reverse cultural imperialism - cola-cocao, Acapulco films and Mexican fast food chains for instance. Was the Americanization of British culture or indeed globalization an underlying concern of the book?

Christopher Evans: Mostly it was an excuse for a few jokes. It seemed logical that any dominant power in the 20th century would also have commercial and cultural dominance in a similar fashion to the USA today. Alternative histories encourage this sort of backhand swiping at the world we actually inhabit, and if it raises a few smiles in the reader then it's fine by me. There's even a Margaret Thatcher joke buried in there somewhere--she ended up running a chain of supermarkets.

How difficult was it writing Aztec Century from a female perspective?

Christopher Evans: How successful it was is perhaps the key question--and one that can't really be answered by me because I'm a man.

You handle the nuts and bolts of writing very adroitly - the complex point of view in The Insider; and the multiple first person/third person narrative shifts in Mortal Remains (1995) are particularly well done. You've also penned a guide: Writing Science Fiction. Is the practical side of writing something that has always interested you?

Christopher Evans: The Insider was an extremely challenging book to write in terms of viewpoint, and if I made it look easy then I'm delighted because I certainly don't want the reader to be bothered by any technical narrative problems that I might have experienced in the writing of it. The hard graft is in creating the illusion that the machine runs smoothly. Mortal Remains was a deliberate attempt to write a multiple viewpoint space opera using the contrivance of the portable womb to shift the action around. I'm dissatisfied with this novel for reasons other than structural ones. I think I'm at my best when my work is directly related in some way to the real present-day world. Writing Science Fiction was another book that was commissioned by a publisher and it was a fascinating exercise that enabled me to put my thoughts about writing fiction, and in particular science fiction, into coherent form. At the time I was also doing a lot of book reviews, which are another means of getting your own ideas in order about your work. But you have to be careful not to over-indulge yourself in this sort of thing and I've deliberately backed away from all that over the last fifteen years. Too much self consciousness can be hazardous to your creative health.

Has your teaching career had an influence on your writing at all?

Christopher Evans: It's kept me sane since I have other people to bounce off. Particularly the students, who'll always keep you grounded. I wasn't really suited to full-time writing--not enough stimulus from outside. Teaching has also made me financially solvent so that I no longer have to write books just to pay the bills. Only the ones I want to write.

In terms of situation and structure your novels are all very different. Do you think this diversity has been disadvantageous to your literary career, in that it's quite hard to define a 'typical' Christopher Evans novel?

Christopher Evans: Yes, it undoubtedly has been disadvantageous from a commercial point of view. My publishers would have dearly loved a follow-up to Aztec Century, and it probably would have done wonders for my sales figures if I had written it. But so few sequels are as good as the originals. I don't have a lot of time for my writing, so I have to make it count. I prefer to try something new, something that I hope will stretch me as a writer--though ideally not to breaking point!

Finally, what do you make of the contemporary state of British sci-fi and are there any authors out there who are currently impressing you?

Christopher Evans: The sf scene seems pretty healthy in Britain at the moment, though I can't speak as any sort of authority. I have to confess that I read very little science fiction these days. Haven't done for years. It's not a deliberate policy, more a question of failing to get the same buzz from the stuff as I used to when I was younger. Much of my reading is non-fiction, often background research for something I'm trying to write. As far as fiction is concerned I'm a lot more interested in what non-genre writers are doing. So recently I've been reading novels by Richard Powers, Douglas Coupland, Jonathan Coe and have finally caught up with Raymond Chandler. The one sf writer who has really impressed me is Ted Chiang, whose short story collection The Story of Your Life I'm currently reading. The title piece is first-rate, quintessentially sf in that it's conceptually original and challenging, but it also manages to be well written and humane.

Cheers Chris, thanks for taking time out to answer these questions.

Capella's Golden Eyes, The Insider, In Limbo, Chimeras, Aztec Century and Mortal Remains are all available through Amazon.

©Anthony Brockway 2004

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